Zuckerberg evasive on letting Facebook users pay to remove ads

April 10, 2018

Transcript

Your Chief Operating Officer, Ms. Sandberg, suggested on the NBC Today Show that Facebook users who do not want their personal information used for advertising might have to pay for that protection, pay for it.
Are you actually considering having Facebook users pay for you not to use that information?
Senator, people have a control over how their information is used in ads in the product today.
So if you want to have an experience Where your ads aren't targeted using all the information that we have available.
You can turn off third party information.
What we've found is that even though some people don't like ads, people really don't like ads that aren't relevent.
And while there is some discomfort for sure, with Using information in making ads more relevant, the overwhelming feedback that we get from our community is that people would rather have us show relevant content there than not.
So we offer this control that you're referencing.
Some people use it.
It's not the majority of people on Facebook.
And I think that that's a good level of control to offer.
I think what Cheryl was saying was that.
In order to not run ads at all, we would still need some sort of business model.
And that is your business model.
So, I take it that And I used the harmless example of chocolate, but it if got into more personal thing, communicating with friends, and I wanna cut it off, I'm gonna have to pay you in order not to send me, using my personal information Something that I don't want.
That, in essence, is what I understood Miss Sandburg to say.
Is that correct?
Yes Senator.
Although, to be clear, we don't off an option today for people to pay to not show ads.
We think offering an ad supported service is the most aligned with our mission of trying to help connect everyone in the world.
Because, we want to offer a free service that everyone can afford.
Okay.
That's the only way we can reach billions of people.
So therefore, you consider my personally identifiable data, the company's data, not my data.
Is that it?
No, Senator.
Actually the first line of our terms of service say that you control and own the information and content that you put on Facebook.